


Then the War

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [273]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bad Decisions, Curufin Has Daddy Issues, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Non-Explicit Sex, Scheming, bad everything, glad to see that's just... a tag that exists, mental deterioration, title shared by a poem by Carl Phillips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25340041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Everyone wants a victory.
Relationships: Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Curufin | Curufinwë, Curufin | Curufinwë & Fëanor | Curufinwë, Curufin | Curufinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Curufin | Curufinwë/Original Female Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [273]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Then the War

Direct sun. The red curve of the eyelid; the red bend in the river, if the river is blood. _I am eating myself alive_ , you don’t say, and saying that, you don’t miss him. Instead, you devour him; Saturn and Jupiter, reversed; the only myth you ever read with interest, reversed. Red. Keeps you warm. The red river.

_Athair, I was not a child for you to leave behind._

“You are improving,” Nora whispers in his ear. “Here, let me thank you for it.”

His shoulder-blades scrape the wall; his eyes are unused to the dark. Sight, at present, is no object, but Curufin always wants to see where he is. He hears her movements. Recognizes their purpose.

The other women having taken up residence in their quarters for the evening, so Nora led him to one of the storage rooms.

Guided him in more than that.

Her touch consumes him. He shuts his eyes as if that hides him; hides some depth of self. 

Vaguely, he admits that he has made another mistake, for this is not where and how he—

Heart and blood and _clarity_ …too much, too little. You are gone.

Nora does not linger over her self-appointed task. Leaves him rigid, not quite silent. He tries to keep silent. She makes ready to slip out again, to leave him. It is a trick of hers, a trick she has played on him more than once, pretending to have done more than used him. _What do I owe you, sir?_

When Curufin is moving about in daylight, when his hands are full of metal and purpose, he assures himself that he cares not for the _pleasure_ of her.

(In truth, the memory and promise of it creep into his mind more often than he expected it would.)

_What do I owe?_

He seizes her wrist. He makes her stay.

Your mother used to think you were a liar, but you don’t lie to your brothers. If you are afraid, it is for them. You have so much to tell them, all of it true. They must be careful. They can’t afford to stumble. They should have known what they were doing, when they left Maedhros to die.

They, and you, _did_ leave him to die. He wasn’t dead, when Thuringwethil offered him living. He isn’t dead now. But that cannot matter.

Maedhros at his best—grudgingly, you grant him a best before paring it down to his worst—wouldn’t have wanted it to matter.

Maedhros hated himself. You look him in the eyes and ask what he knows.

You—

“What is your game?”

“My game?” Nora asks. This room is almost empty; supplies waning; spaces opening. The stale scent of old wheat. Curufin hears her voice echo. Hears other voices, trapped inside his head.

Not for the first time, he wonders how many years stretch between them.

When a soul is damned, it is so laden that it falls. And what of the heaviness of eyelids, of hands, of a body laid down? No matter how loved the body was, earth must be carted to cover it over. A long task. A slow task.

It is always the same, filling a grave.

You filled the only one you ever dug.

“I do not love you,” he says. (He should not have said that first.)

“Love?” Nora titters. She puts her hand on his face and he turns his cheek. “Curufin, how could it be? We are only…comforting each other a little. We are doing whatever you like.”

He doesn’t know what that means. He hasn’t had time to decide.

“Then make yourself of use,” he mutters, wishing he could see her flinch beneath the harshness. Wishing that she _would_ flinch. “More use than a common whore.”

“Have you much experience with common whores, dear?”

He does up his buttons. No more, no more. “I want information.”

You heard your brother scream today. Muffled, wordless. A nightmare, because sleep bore no safety.

If you are afraid—

Nora agrees to bring him information. Assures him that all she wants is his happiness, his security. _You are a man, and men don’t want to be coddled in times of trouble. I am not coddling you. I enjoy you. You are improving. You will make a woman very happy someday. You make me—_

These are the sort of things Nora says, which are useless.

Worse, too, the information she brings him is useless. She can tell him of his cousins’ suspicions—Artanis is suspicious of everyone, Aredhel is suspicious chiefly of Nora—and she can tell him who has coupled, who has quarreled, who has stolen a little here or there.

All that cannot matter.

Grandmother Miriel had foresight, Athair used to say. Curufin doesn’t dream of the future, or even of the past, but he likes to think that whatever spurred Athair to admire her dictates some wisdom to Athair’s favorite, now. It would be just. It would be sensible. After all, there need be no greater mysticism than the ready understanding of a craftsman. Curufin _knows_ how a weapon is made. Knows what it means to make _and_ fire a weapon, to feel success in your body with the recoil.

To see success along the path of the bullet is the recoil’s answer. They are inseparable.

When they abandoned their railroad riots, it was not really a defeat. That means it was not really a victory, for Melkor Bauglir called Morgoth, for murdering Gothmog, for whatever regiments they share.

And everyone wants a victory.

You don’t dream of the past or future because you dream of yourself. What are you, in time? What are you, in a river, a road, blood, a heart, pleasure, grief, or a handful of earth?

Everyone wants a victory.

“They won’t be satisfied,” he says.

Celegorm stares blearily back. Another morning. The second? The third? Since he sought out Nora before he visited the mine. He _did_ visit the mine, later in the night. He doesn’t lie.

Not to his brothers.

“Who? Satisfied? Is this about Fingolfin—”

He does not wait for Celegorm to meet him where his mind leaps. He draws a map with his words instead. “Fingon took something from _them_.”

Waits, so that knowledge can dawn on his good brother’s face.

“Took Maedhros.”

“You say you do not care for me,” Nora murmurs. They have a bed to bear them, today. The other women are at supper. Nora does not say whether her absence there shall be noticed or not. Curufin is beginning to wonder whether his own absence is something that he even understands.

He says, to answer her, “I don’t.”

And as he answers, he recoils from her mouth.

She is always leaving marks on his throat. He hates it. Hates what she calls affection. He pushes her away, holds her down.

She says, “And yet, you come back.”


End file.
